What are some of the most highly rated books of all time?

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Some of the most highly rated books of all time are Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," James Joyce's "Ulysses," Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," according to TheGreatestBooks.org. As of 2015, TheGreatestBooks.org considers these books the top five best books ever written based upon 107 different lists of best books from a wide range of different sources.

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In Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," he tells his own life story in the form of an allegory. The work was originally published in seven separate parts from 1913 to 1927. Many consider it the greatest work of 20th-century French literature.

Joyce's "Ulysses" is a major Modernist work that chronicles the adventures of Leopold Bloom over the course of one day, June 16, 1904. The title is the Latinized version of Odysseus, the name of the hero of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey."

Cervantes' "Don Quixote" is a story about a country gentleman who is obsessed with reading tales of chivalry. He begins to lose his mind and sets out to revive chivalry under the adopted name Don Quixote. The book was originally published in two volumes -- the first in 1605 and the second in 1615.

Melville's "Moby Dick," published in 1851, is considered by some to be the greatest American novel ever written. It chronicles the adventures of the narrator, Ishmael, who is a crew member of a whaling ship. Captain Ahab, a man who is in search of an elusive white whale named Moby Dick, is the commander of the ship.